Don't Pay for Your MBA: The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need

by Laurie Pickard

  Study project management by taking a MOOC such as Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management from the University of Virginia (Coursera).

  Explore some of the free project management and collaboration tools you can access online, such as Trello and Asana. If you do not currently use a cloud-based file sharing and storage program like Google Drive or Dropbox, start now. Take a look at some of the excellent YouTube videos on using these tools. If you need additional help getting started, Udemy provides more comprehensive courses on all of the most commonly used workplace productivity programs.

  Take the lead on a project in one of your learning laboratories. Ideally, the project should involve a multi-person team working over a period of weeks or months to achieve a measurable result. Again, you can pick a business project, such as training a sales team, or a personal undertaking, such as planning and pulling off a big wedding.

  Use the techniques you studied in your project management course and your chosen collaboration software to ensure that the project concludes on time and within budget.

  Ask the other members of the team to provide candid feedback on how you managed the project.

  D.Assess a repeating business process and recommend ways to improve efficiency. In this assignment, you will apply operations management techniques to a repeating business process.

  Study operations management by taking a MOOC such as Introduction to Operations Management (Coursera), one of the foundational courses offered by the Wharton School of Business.

  Make a list of repeating business processes in one or more of your learning laboratories. You can look at most aspects of business and life as processes: stocking shelves, filing important records, and responding to customer inquiries; mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, or cleaning an apartment. Christian Terwiesch, the professor who teaches Introduction to Operations Management, cites examples of operational efficiency ranging from cooks making sandwiches to doctors seeing patients in a busy hospital.

  Select one of the repeating processes for a thorough analysis. Choose one that takes place over a relatively short time span and repeats frequently enough for you to observe multiple cycles of the process.

  Use the techniques you studied in your operations management course to analyze the repeating process.

  Prepare a report or presentation summarizing your findings and recommending changes that will improve efficiency.

  E.Analyze product-market fit for an entrepreneurial venture. Finally, you will practice using customer development techniques drawn from the Lean Startup methodology.

  If you haven’t already taken a MOOC on entrepreneurship, do so. I particularly like the excellent course How to Build a Startup (Udacity), taught by serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, a major contributor to the modern methods of entrepreneurship. The course offers a well-crafted introduction to the techniques of Lean Startup, along with plenty of encouragement for you to get out of the classroom and into contact with customers.

  Identify an entrepreneurial project you plan or hope to launch. You might even think about one you could suggest to your employer.

  Use what you have learned about entrepreneurship to create an initial sketch of the product or service, including a description of your target customers, their location, their main problems or “pain points,” and to what extent your proposed product or service will better fulfill their customer experience. Try using a tool like the Business Model Canvas to record your assumptions.

  Conduct interviews with seven to ten target customers. In each interview, focus on the causes of the main “pain points” they suffer.

  Use what you learn during the interviews to revise and update your initial business model sketch. Take special note of any assumptions you should revise in light of the feedback you have gathered.

  Summarize your findings in a plan that you or an imagined entrepreneur might successfully execute.

  After you have finished one or more of these exercises, retake the Rate Your Current Business Skills test (Figure 4-2). Can you see measurable improvement in your mastery of these important skills? Have you pinpointed other skills you want to acquire and develop? Use what you have learned to continue refining your own personal skill development curriculum.

  Craft Your Own Skill-Based Challenges

  Jerome understands very well the importance of putting new skills into practice immediately. As an instructional designer for a software company, he spends his days designing training modules that enable students to put what they are learning to work in hands-on practice exercises. Jerome didn’t always consider himself an educator; he earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science. Early on he fell in love with the idea of online learning and saw a terrific opportunity to advance his career and follow his passion by taking a job with a large tech firm in his city that needed computer scientists with an understanding of online learning techniques. From the first day on the job he knew he had found his true calling.

  Of course, Jerome immediately felt drawn to the wonderful new world of MOOCs. By studying business online, he hoped to kill two birds with one stone: learn about state-of-the-art online education while acquiring a first-rate business education himself. It was a perfect match. The learning helped him design his own programs while putting what he was learning into practice. As he told me, “Sometimes you have to invent a reason to practice. I don’t intend to become an accountant, but when I studied accounting, I was an accountant. My conversations at home, my family budget, my interests at work—everything was tinged with that world-view. You have to really immerse yourself as you’re taking a class. But more than anything else, a practical task really solidifies the learning in my head.”

  POINTS TO REMEMBER

  1.Think of your business education in terms of skills and competencies you want to master.

  2.Take stock of your essential business skills, focusing on the three main categories of the business curriculum (Quantitative and Financial Analysis, Management and Leadership, and Big-Picture Thinking) and two crosscutting business skill sets (Communication-Storytelling, and Technology).

  3.Select a learning laboratory (or laboratories) where you can practice your business skills as you acquire them.

  4.Use the second Adviser’s Challenge in this chapter to add skills to your repertoire.

  5.Invent your own skill-based challenges to put your skills into practice in real settings.

  5

  Create Your Career

  Charting a Professional Path

  CORY liked to take the path less traveled. “When I was young, some successful people encouraged me to attend university, while others encouraged me to find myself before pursuing a formal education,” he says. “Weighing my options, I decided not to pursue postsecondary education at that stage of my life; instead I began to develop my interpersonal and problem-solving skills.” When his classmates went the expected route, enrolling in colleges and universities, Cory took a sales job in the local office of TeleNex, a multinational communications company known for its commitment to employee development. Thus began a lifelong experiment in personal career development.

  One of his early mentors advised Cory to take stock of his strengths, talents, and interests and to build his future career based on that foundation. Taking that advice to heart, Cory reflected on the math classes that had so engrossed him in high school. “Most people hated word problems, but I always loved identifying patterns based on what sequence or shape comes next, or figuring out how many fences Alex and Julie could paint together in a day. I realized that I like considering a complex situation and figuring out the solution that fits.” How, he wondered, could he turn that fascination into a career advantage? Perhaps he should move into marketing, where his skills might help TeleNex better target potential customers.

  After a successful stint in the marketing department, Cory moved into client relations, where he became interested in process improvement. Eventually he took his growing arsenal of skills to some of the best-known bu
sinesses in the fields of technology and management consulting. Cory credits much of his success to the disciplined way he has developed and managed his strengths, a strategy that now includes taking a number of well-chosen MOOCs. “I knew I wasn’t willing to go all the way back to square one and sit through the distribution requirements of a bachelor’s degree. I needed something flexible and adaptable that would allow me to study just what I needed, when I needed it.”

  His MOOC-based business education led him into commercial banking, a profession that seemed ideally suited to his skills with pattern recognition, adaptability, and quick decision making. To his chagrin, however, the bank he had targeted as a perfect fit for him and his talents turned him down after a lengthy interview he thought he had aced. The interviewers had seemed genuinely intrigued by his nontraditional background. One of those interviewers later confided that the panel had passed over Cory in favor of an internal candidate and encouraged him to reapply in the future.

  One year later, after successfully completing additional online courses in marketing, strategic thinking, and managerial accounting, he reapplied at the bank that had rejected him and ended up landing a job the company had not yet advertised. Cory now spends his days using quick thinking, problem solving, and strategy to manage a complex commercial loan portfolio.

  Of all the skills you acquire on your quest to become a business professional, none will serve you better than the ability to develop and manage your own career. To create my own MBA-style business education (and ultimately to write this book), I thoroughly researched what happens behind the walls of the top traditional MBA programs. In the end, I was amazed by how much time, effort, and resources business schools spend to help students better match their education to the world of work. Whether in discussions with mentors and advisers or through an intensive coaching program, students conduct rigorous self-assessments, reflect on their past accomplishments, research business careers, and develop detailed lists of potential employers, all geared to helping them find the right career fit after graduation. While you may at some point want to enlist the services of a professional career coach or counselor, you will never find one who knows you better than the one who lives inside your own head. Develop that coach’s skills, and your career will flourish.

  Coach Yourself

  Whether you are just starting out your own great career experiment, orchestrating a career shift, hoping to rise through the ranks at your current workplace, or planning to launch a new enterprise from scratch, you should think of your education as a laboratory where you can experiment with ways you can achieve the success you seek. Traditional programs structure that lab experience for you. In a self-directed program, you must learn to think strategically about your business education and conduct experiments that will help you discover your true calling. At this middle stage of your education, having gained some exposure to the business curriculum and some specific business skills, you should begin to think seriously about your short- and long-term career goals. “Where do I want to go? How will I get there?”

  Imagine that you are taking a second-semester business school course designed to prepare you for a summer internship and the more practical, hands-on work that comprises the latter half of the program. Many business schools offer such courses on self-knowledge, self-understanding, and career management. Students usually love these courses, many of which you can obtain in book form. As you begin your career self-coaching program, consider hiring such a “coach in a book.” One of the best is Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success, based on a popular course taught by Professor G. Richard Shell at the Wharton School of Business. Springboard will help you direct your strengths and passions toward a deeply satisfying and richly rewarding career. Or you might consult The Art of Self-Coaching, by executive coach Ed Batista, which is drawn from his course of the same title offered at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Like any good career coach, these business professors insist that you begin with a clear-eyed self-assessment.

  Assess Yourself

  At a workshop with some of the business students in my network, we started the day’s activities by taking one of the many character and personality assessments available online. As people finished a short quiz, the videoconference line bubbled with excited chatter.

  “What was your top characteristic? Mine was Love of Learning.”

  “Interesting! I had that as number five. My number one was Curiosity.”

  “I had Analytical Thinking. Did anyone else have that?”

  “Of course you did. You’re an engineer! That was like number twenty for me. I had Empathy, Creativity, and Problem Solving right at the top. But that makes sense, too, because I’ve gotten really into customer development, which is all about those traits.”

  This kind of excitement often erupts when you begin to study one of the most fascinating topics in any business curriculum: yourself. Even if you have always reflected on who you are and where you are going in life, you may not have looked at yourself through the lens of business. When you do, you may make some interesting discoveries.

  Many business schools offer or even require detailed personal assessments, in which students answer a great number of multiple-choice questions about themselves, their habits, and their preferences. The results indicate what sort of work environments you might enjoy, how you might react in certain business situations, and which specific careers you should consider. While such assessments do not guarantee a successful career, they do get you thinking about “life after education.” Cory’s mentor pointed him to StrengthsFinder 2.0, a career management book that includes a personal strengths inventory. There, he received some strong reinforcement for his career hunches about problem solving, quick thinking, and adaptability.

  The Adviser’s Challenge in Figure 5-1 will help you take stock of your personal preferences and tendencies and what they may tell you about plotting your professional career path.

  Figure 5-1

  ADVISER’S CHALLENGE

  CONDUCT A DETAILED SELF-ASSESSMENT

  Select and complete two quiz-based self-assessments. Take one personality-based assessment, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and one career-focused assessment, such as Career Leader or MAPP. Personality assessments tend to paint a general picture of how you interact with others and how you approach problems. Career-focused assessments zero in on the business careers that may appeal to you.

  Note that many of the higher-quality assessments charge a fee for complete results. Some will let you access a shortened, free version or take the complete quiz at no charge, but with only a limited set of results. Consider some of these examples:

  •Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

  •VIA Character Survey

  •California Psychological Inventory

  •Sokanu

  •Career Leader

  •MAPP

  Reflect on your past work and education experiences, asking yourself the following questions:

  •What work experiences have I enjoyed the most?

  •Why did I like that work?

  •What sort of work do I dream of doing?

  •Why does that work appeal to me?

  •Would I derive both satisfaction and a decent income from that work?

  •Can I imagine myself doing that work five or ten years from now?

  •Which business subjects do I love?

  •Why do I love those subjects?

  •Does my business education match my vision of a successful career?

  Look for common threads or themes. You should look for certain patterns that recur in your life. Make a two-column list; label one column “Recurring Themes” and the other “Types of Work.” For example, you may feel most comfortable “working alone in a quiet space,” or you might prefer doing your job in a “social environment” with a roomful of coworkers chatting on the phone and typing madly on their keyboards. The former preference might lead you to consider such job titles as “business analy
st,” while the latter might point you toward “sales and marketing” or “fast-paced startup,” where you would work in a cubicle or open work environment that offers a lot of social interaction.

  It’s hard to cast a cold, clear eye on our innermost selves. Try to adhere to the principles of nonjudgment and appreciative inquiry. A nonjudgmental approach seeks an accurate picture of reality uncolored by value judgments, such as “I could make a ton of money in investment banking.” In reality, you may love writing and communication more than high-level finance, which argues for a position in the business media rather than one at Behemoth Bank. Your education should prepare you to pursue your true calling, not necessarily the heftiest salary or the most prestigious title. Appreciative inquiry means looking for strengths rather than weaknesses. Some experts on power and leadership believe that success depends on shoring up your weaknesses; others insist that it comes from playing to your strengths. In this case, you should focus on the latter school of thought: “What are my most positive attributes? How can I best take advantage of those traits? What sort of work will let me show off my strengths?”

  Patricia, trained in fine arts, took a personal inventory after spending several years working in the fashion industry in New York but had ended up feeling disappointed in her stalled career trajectory. “I thought I wanted to be an artist, but after some deep thinking about myself, I decided that while I really wanted to do something creative with my life, I was better at storytelling than painting. That eventually led me to my dream job as a developmental editor, helping authors become better storytellers. It’s funny. My strength is helping people overcome a weakness.” Patricia gained the skills she needed by interning with a literary agent, who later became her partner. Now she plans to enroll in Small Business Management (Saylor.org), a MOOC that will add business acumen to her repertoire of skills.